September 2011

We hope you’ve all enjoyed the little change of pace this week. If you missed the earlier posts, you can take a little peek into my new office space by clicking here, and check out Kate’s kitchen makeover by clicking here. In both of our posts, we mentioned a lot of the stores we shopped at during our home improvement projects, and what would be more fun than sharing some of the love with you fabulous readers?? We rounded up …

Have you ever lived in and worked on a house and wondered who’s lived there throughout the years–if it was someone’s “forever house” or if it was just a stopping point? What memories were made there? What you would do if you ever found the person who walled off the hallway leading to your kid’s bedroom and then created a new doorway into the bedroom directly off the kitchen, but it wasn’t a normal-sized doorway and couldn’t accommodate normal-sized doors, …

So we decided to do something a little different this week. One of the interesting things about blogging is that you open up a little part of your life to the world. I will admit one of my favorite things is getting to peek inside the creative spaces of my favorite bloggers; whether it be their kitchens, their craft rooms, their kids rooms, or any room really. I feel like I already know them on a somewhat personal level, and …

So a couple of years ago, Sara and I had the opportunity to work with the lovely folks over at Good Bite. In addition to a few fun videos that we did, we contributed some of our favorite quick and easy recipes to this cookbook, Weeknight Meals: Delicious Made Easy. It’s packed full of quick and easy recipes from some of our (and probably your) favorite bloggers like the White on Rice Couple, Simply Recipes, Steamy Kitchen, Picky Palate, Recipe …

So after 5 weeks of chaos, dust, tears, angst, sweat, and “Moves Like Jagger”played on repeat at 2:00 in the morning, we have, like, 97% of a kitchen. We still have a few little projects and we also have to make the 4-hour trek to Ikea for a third time (don’t EVEN get me started. I vow to all of you here and now that if I ever do another Ikea kitchen, I will live within a 90-minute radius of …

I’m always a little leery of foods with Caribbean spice blends. They always sound great to me, with a lot of the Latin flavors I love like citrus, cumin, and tropical fruits. But they also usually include some traditionally autumnal spices (for those of us who live in the US) like cinnamon, cloves, and allspice. I once had a bad experience with a Jamaican Jerk recipe that left my chicken wings tasting like pumpkin pie and I’ve been gun shy …

We’re excited to let you all know about a great new feature on Our Best Bites! You’ll notice at the end of each post there is now a “Save Recipe” button. This allows you to easily save your favorite recipes from Our Best Bites to your own online recipe box! You’ve all been asking for something like this for a long time so we’re thrilled to be able to make it happen! Another great thing is that when you click …

So you guys know I love my homemade yeast breads. Like Breadsticks and French bread and Rosemary Focaccia and Flatbread and all sorts of yeasty goodness. I find making them very fun and satisfying and relaxing (all of which are promptly negated by the very un-fun, un-satisfying, and tension-inducing moment when I take a look around my kitchen and realize that my exuberant mess isn’t going to clean itself). However. Sometimes, it’s just not going to happen. Like on those …